


Provenance

by ishafel



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-25
Updated: 2011-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:10:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything starts somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Provenance

Eames is working on a from-the-school-of forgery, a “lost” Eddie Arning pastels drawing. Impossibly blue sky, orange sun, grass greener than even Ireland grows it, fluffy sheep with mildly demonic expressions. He likes to forge Outsider art, especially the obscure American variety: it's less work, the materials are cheaper, there's a market but no screening from the big auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's, and the provenance is usually dicey anyway. Arning spent years in a mental hospital, and did most of his paintings in a nursing home. It isn't like trying to come up with a story to explain a Rembrandt no one's ever seen before.

So he's only mildly torqued when someone bangs on the door when he's in the middle of doing the sun and his brush jerks. Having two giant orange blobs in the sky might even make it more authentic. There's a gun in the drawer of his drafting table. He slides it into the back of his jeans and pulls his shirt over it before he goes to see who's there.

He doesn't think anyone knows he's in London, apart from the cousins-- but he's actually warier of Molly and Pat than he is of Interpol. “What is it?” he demands, fumbling with the locks. “I'm an artist, for the love of Christ, I can't just be stopping when inspiration's with me--.”

“It's not the bloody police,” the man on the other side of the door snarls. “Open the door, lad, for fuck's sake!”

Uncle Mick. Eames hasn't heard anything from him since he was sent up to Portlaoise, wouldn't have thought Mick would venture onto English soil, given the choice. “Come in,” he says, “Come in, Mick.”

Michael O'Malley isn't a proper uncle by blood, but one of Eames' Da's buddies from the bad old days. Only, unlike Da, he didn't fall from an embassy balcony while stealing a tiara worth a king's ransom. Eames waves the man to a seat, and fumbles clean glasses and a bottle of gin from the cupboard. “Drink?”

Mick waves a hand in assent and Eames pours a generous splash into each glass and passes one of them across. Mick takes it, raises it. “To your mother and father, lad, God rest them.”

Eames leans over to clink his glass with Mick's. “Mum and Da,” he echoes. “You're looking well, Mick. Seems prison did well by you.”

“Oh, well enough, well enough.” Mick must be going on for sixty now, and most of it hard living, but he looks forty-five, his hair still dark and his eyes blue as hot steel. He's a dangerous man, Mick; he and Da weren't only robbers in the old days, but terrorists and killers, too, and it hasn't been more than ten years since Mick went away the last time. Still, Eames has fond memories of him demonstrating how to saw off a shotgun and build a carbomb out of horseshit, those long lazy summers in Ireland.

He watches as Mick stands, still too restless to pretend to be polite, and wanders over to Eames' easel. “Jesus wept,” Mick says, looking at the Arning. “That fancy art college, and this is the best you can do?”

Eames smiles. “It isn't my name I have to sign on it.”

“How much does a thing like this bring?”

“If it went to auction, properly, it might go for three thousand pounds,” Eames says, and watches Mick's jaw drop. “As it's dodgy, and I can't be bothered, I'll take half that. Not too bad for a morning's work, even if it is shite.”

“You'll print up fake papers for it, then?”

“Yeah.” Eames takes a sip of his gin and squints lovingly at the picture. “Fake bill of sale, from a fake gallery. This is a fine example of American Primitive art, which it just so happens my dear old grandad is a connoisseur of.”

“Your old grandad the earl of Albemarle?” Mick asks, sneering. He'd loved Mum, but he'd never forgiven her for being an Hon., or for being English.

“That's right,” Eames agrees. “Old grandad collects, and everyone knows he put me in charge of all of his artwork. And what a collection it's turning out to be. I flog one every six months or so, and split the proceeds with Himself.”

Mick shakes his head. “Three thousand pounds for crayon on paper. It looks like it was drawn by a blind child, lad.”

“Well. You didn't come all the way here from the old country to insult my etchings, did you, Mickey?”

“I've a job for you. Not complicated, only needs muscle and a minimum of brains, but it must be someone I trust.”

“And you came to me first?”. Eames sets his glass down. “I'm flattered, Mick.”

The other man clears his throat. “I wanted your cousin Patrick, but he's not able to leave Ireland just at the moment.”

“As it happens, I've given up shooting people,” Eames says. “I learned in Kosovo that it didn't agree with me. But Molly's in London, and she makes up in meanness what she lacks in size.”

“It's not that sort of job. Looks are the only thing that count, and any blood that spills will be faker than those sheep.”

“Fair enough. But I think you're underestimating my sheep.”

Mick gives him a train ticket to Paris, a handful of Euros, and an address. He doesn't ask if Eames has a passport. Maybe he knows Eames still has a drawerful. As he's leaving, he touches Eames' elbow. “You'll forgive me, lad, but I have to ask. Why the fuck are there two suns in your picture?”

After Mick's gone, Eames goes back to it. Mick's right, the second sun makes the whole thing look unbalanced somehow. He puts in a third one, on the other end of the sky. Perfect. This is why not just anyone can sell crap drawings. Most people lack the artist's eye.

*

Mick's address takes him to a cheap hotel in a bad neighborhood in Paris. Eames meets Mick in the bar, and follows him upstairs. Mick still hasn't really explained what the hell they're doing, and Eames misses the weight of an automatic rifle, the security of body armor. He wasn't a very good soldier, but he'd looked damn good in a uniform-- and he doesn't entirely trust Uncle Mick that there isn't going to be bloodshed.

The real first job Eames ever did was with Mick: Mick and Da and Mum. Mum stood by the side of the road in an evening dress and tears and flagged down rich punters in expensive cars, and Mick, Eames and Da robbed them once they stopped. It hadn't really needed all of them, but it had been glorious, and Eames had thought then it would go on forever.

They'd run the same con in six countries, and after they'd fallen out Eames' share had paid for two years at RCA. But they'd fallen out because Mick got carried away, sometimes, with the punters, and because Mick thought Eames treated the whole thing like a game.

Still, hotel rooms had always been Eames' cousin Molly's bit, and he didn't think Mick would have brought him all the way to Paris to dress as a chambermaid and rifle luggage. They take the lift up, and Mick unlocks one of the rooms with a proper key and lets Eames in, and there isn't anyone or anything in the hotel room but a silver case lying on one of the beds.

“What's this, then?” Eames demands. “Is there a lock to crack?” Uncle Bobby, who actually was Da's brother, taught them all safecracking. His son Pat is by far the best of them, but Eames isn't half-bad, certainly better than Mick. He'd thought about specialising, for a bit, but when he was fourteen Uncle Bobby had been sent to Bristol for thirty years, and that had put Eames right off.

“Tell me, lad, have you ever heard of dream-sharing?”

If it were Da telling the story, Eames wouldn't believe it, but Michael O'Malley isn't the sort to go in for elaborate practical jokes. Eames lies back on the bed and lets Mick slide the needle into his arm.

And then Mick touches his arm. “This is it.” They're standing in the street outside the hotel. Mick starts to walk, and Eames moves after him. He can't quite remember how he got outside, and when they reach the corner, the street signs are written in English and Irish, not in French.

“Wait,” Eames says. “This is the dream?” It feels flat, ordinary, everyday. There are people on the streets, and none of them meet his eyes. But he notices that as they walk, the buildings they pass are changing. Shabby brick sidewalks, crumbling stone-- becomes concrete, and flat glass, and there are trees every few feet. This is a different city, this is a different world.

“New York-- America.” Mick says it the way Da always did, like it was more than just another country, like it was a promise. Da had never gone, and Eames hasn't, either. He wonders if Mick has. “The mark is an American.”

They stop outside a brightly lit pub, and go in. “This is where we'll meet him,” Mick says. “It's modeled on the place he does business out of in New York. He's an arms dealer, and he thinks I'm selling unclaimed Soviet missiles. Once we've agreed on a deal, he'll take me in the back to arrange the wire transfer. He'll insist you stay out here. Sit at the table and keep your mouth shut, unless there's shooting. You'll have a weapon. If things go south, shoot yourself, and when you wake up, give me the wakeup call just like I showed you.”

Eames nods. This is a test, more than anything. He knows that. If he can stay quiet and play by the rules, Mick will throw better jobs his way. Eames isn't sure if it's what he wants or not. The dream feels odd to him, unsubstantial. He's not sure he likes it.

“How often have you done this?”, he asks. “Run this con with the dream machine?”

Mick shrugs. “Dozen times, maybe. The tech's still new. And you have to keep changing the con-- people talk, especially when they go to a meeting in a bar and wake up in a strange hotel room with their bank accounts emptied.”

“You should take their kidneys, too,” Eames suggests, only half kidding. He knew this gorgeous little Japanese girl with black market connections; she'd shown him where to cut, tracing the lines onto Eames' body with a marker, and then licking along them all the way down--. He glances out at the street, and freezes.

There she is, Aiko, in her pink Hello Kitty shirt, with the AK-47 on its strap hanging over her shoulder. She's the bendiest girl Eames ever fucked, and the best at tying knots, but she shouldn't be in America.

“Projection,” Mick says. “The Asian girl. She's from out of your head. Please tell me you didn't shag her and steal her wallet.”

Eames winces. “Would that be very bad?”

“I guess we'll find out. Dying is-- something you should try at least once among friends anyway.”

Eames follows him out into the street, a little wary. It hadn't just been her wallet he'd taken, and he does feel guilty even if he only did it to keep from waking up in a tub of ice, and he's aware that thinking about how good Aiko was with a knife is a mistake.

He barely feels the round that kills him. At least she has good aim. He and Mick jerk awake on the beds, with the thing in its case between them.

“Next time, keep Hello Kitty out of it,” Mick says, easing the needle out and pressing an alcohol swab over the vein.

“Sorry.” Eames presses down automatically, watching Mick pack things up. “So that's all there is to it?”

“No. But you're muscle, lad. You don't have to be an architect to lay brick.”

They do another run the next morning, and this time there's no Aiko. Everyone Eames sees looks vaguely familiar, but only vaguely: they're people he's seen before, or people Mick's seen, but no one they know.

*

When it's time to meet the mark, Eames puts on his best poker face and sits at the table, arms crossed over his chest. The mark barely registers his presence-- people don't, when they're used to bodyguards-- and he and Mick talk guns for a while until Mick sends Eames to the bar to buy a round.

On the way back Eames drops a Rohypnol in the mark's drink. Twenty minutes later they haul him out to the elevator and take him upstairs. So far it's just like the kidney con-- which Eames never actually ran-- but he tries not to think about that.

He goes under and they're in the pub in New York. It's very cozy and pleasant except that no one blinks when Mick hauls a suitcase full of nuke out. The mark is properly admiring, as well he should be. It's a fine looking approximation of a warhead, or at least Eames assumes it is. Mick is a pro, and he always gets the details right, unlike Da who had been sloppy and covered it with charm.

After a while, Mick and the mark go in the back to finish the deal. Mick told Eames beforehand that that's the way the mark always does things. Eames isn't sure whether it's true or not. It might be that Mick's afraid if Eames gets the bank account numbers he'll pull a double cross; it might be that Mick's right.

Eames isn't the sixteen year old kid desperate to be one of the adults any more. He walked away from the family to go to the Royal College of the Arts, he buried Da on his own, he spent two years in the Yugoslav in the middle of a war, and went AWOL when he got tired of genocide. He isn't above a little light treason, but it won't be for money-- at least, not for this kind of money.

It takes twenty minutes to do a wire transfer. According to Mick, it takes as long as the mark thinks twenty minutes is, to do a fake wire transfer. Eames could check his cell phone, or read a book, except this is a dream, and he can't. He's afraid to look at the people-- the projections-- in the street.

His nightmares don't all wear Hello Kitty gear and carry automatic weapons. Some of them are a great deal less pleasant, and less flexible, than Aiko. So Eames looks in the mirror over the bar instead.

The painting that got him into RCA was of Mum, seated at her dressing table in front of the mirror, pencil in hand. She's turned away from the mirror, toward her audience, and there's a smudge of mustache drawn on her lip on the reflected side of her face. Eames had called it “Debo in Drag.”

He doesn't paint much any more. He only really likes doing portraits, and they weren't edgy enough for his teachers. Anyone can paint faces, or take photographs of them, they'd said. Portraits and landscapes might be pretty, but they lacked significance. Art was about making people think.

But here, in the dream, Eames could paint anyone he liked. Watching his face in the mirror, he rounded the edges, put wrinkles around the mouth and eyes, grayed the hair, until Da's face looked back at him. Narrow the chin, delicate cheekbones, blue eyes, straight fair hair, and Mum's reflection looks back at him.

She isn't dead, Debo, despite Uncle Mick and his God rests. She had a breakdown when Da died, while Eames was still away at school. He'd driven home in a hurry, and when he'd got to Dublin, she'd been gone and Himself the Earl had been there waiting. She needed rest, he'd said, a proper change. A vacation from Ireland and her dead conman husband and her shite artist son. Eames has seen her a couple of times since, but the spark's gone from her. She loved the jobs, and she loved Eames, but she loved Brian Sullivan more than the rest combined. She's happy being the Honorable Deborah now, opening gymkhanas and going to garden parties and living with Himself in the vast, decaying castle. Unlike Da, she never minded being poor.

Eames blinks back tears, and in the mirror so does his mum. He changes faces again, to Jack Sawyer, his best mate in the SAS. Jack had been more than a quick fuck, and less than a lover, and then he'd stepped on a mine. Eames had deserted, after that, but not before he'd robbed the museum in Prishtina.

Fuck the Albanians, he'd thought then; he hadn't understood what they were fighting for. He still doesn't. Da and Uncle Bobby and Uncle Mick had all been out with the paras, blowing up schoolkids and cafes, and Eames doesn't really understand that either. He's neither English nor Irish, though he can pass for either. He isn't really anything.

Eames changes into Molly, then Pat, then his landlady in London, then Mick. He's pulling a face at Uncle Mick in the mirror when the door behind the bar opens, and the real Mick comes out. Fairly caught, Eames panics. The mark is behind Mick, and hasn't seen Eames yet.

There's time. Eames takes a breath, steadies, and paints his own face over the one reflected in the mirror. “Eddie,” Mick says icily, “I think we're done here.” The gun comes up from his side, smooth and natural. He shoots Eames in the head.

They wake up, back in the hotel room, the mark still passed out on the floor. Mick clears away the I.V.s and tucks the dream machine into its case before he leans down to take the mark's wallet. Eames wipes the fingerprints, although it probably doesn't matter. It's not like the mark's going straight to the gendarmes when he wakes up.

They walk out, Eames and Mick, quick but not hurried. They're professionals, never more professional than when they've left a roofied arms dealer tied up and unconscious on the floor of a hotel room booked in a fake name and paid for with a fake credit card. Eames is going to catch a train back to London, using another forged passport. Mick is going to another hotel, booked under a different false identity, and complete the wire transfer using the mark's account numbers.

They'll meet up in London, for the divvying up of the spoils, or possibly Mick will still be angry about Eames' lapse of attention and will keep the money. Sooner or later one of them will need something from the other, and they'll make friends again. They're family, which is the important part.

There will be other cons, and other dreams, and Eames will play other people in them, and one day he will make a name for himself as an artist and a forger. The street signs are in French when they reach the end of the block, and Eames goes left and Mick goes right, as smoothly as they'd choreographed it, and by the time Eames catches his train he's thinking about Everald Brown oil paintings and where Himself might theoretically have acquired one.


End file.
